Commentary: Wayback Machine. St. Anne is a patroness of Canada; in that country, her festival holds the rank of a Feast.

Quoth the Holy Redeemer bulletin:

Our Lady made this known about her parents Anne & Joachim: they were chaste & just people, they were very religious & studied the Holy Scriptures, they both prayed fervently for the coming of the Messiah.

Quoth the Holy Family bulletin:

By tradition Joachim & Anne are considered to be the names of the parents of Mary, the Mother of God. We have no historical evidence, however, of any elements of their lives, including their names. Any stories about Mary's father & mother come to us through tradition. Devotion to St. Anne grew in Europe through a popular French tradition. The French believed that [Ss.] Mary Magdalene [22 July], Lazarus [17 December], Martha [29 July], & other friends of Jesus crossed the Mediterranean Sea & landed at the southern French city of Marseilles (then, ) where they spread the news about Jesus's death & resurrection. According to this tradition, Mary Magdalene's group brought with them the remains of St. Anne.

Commentary: His Holiness Pope Francis has informally referred to Father Hamel, who was brutally murdered while celebrating Mass just last summer, as a martyr & waived the normal five-year waiting period before the cause for his canonization could proceed.

Friends, our Gospel for today is the parable of the sower and the seed. It has to do with the growth and development of the kingdom of God. We hear that Jesus "went out of the house and sat down by the sea" and that large crowds gathered around him. This is Jesus speaking to the whole world.

Sitting down, he is, again, in the attitude of the ancient teacher and judge, and he speaks the parable of the sower. The sower sows far and wide, some of the seed landing on the path, where the birds eat it up; some falling on rocky ground, where it was scorched in the sun; some sown among thorns, where the life is choked off; and some sown on rich soil, where it bears thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold.

Keep in mind that Jesus himself, in person, is the seed sown. Jesus is the logos that wants to take root in us. This seed is sown far and wide, through all sorts of means, but in you, let the seed be sown deep, where it can't be stolen, scorched, or choked.